THIS WEEK: Hot, Threads and Jaws

The daily average temperature this past week was 0.08 F warmer than any other of record-keeping.

The average global air temperature in midweek was, however, 62.9 F. You say, but that's pretty cold. Sure, but you're also averaging in the Arctic and Antarctic, etc.

Why so hot? Said to be a combination of global warming, summer and the advent of El Niño. And it should get even hotter into next month.

Europe suffered its hottest June, ever.
It's winter in the Antarctic, but parts of this continent and nearby ocean were 18-36F higher than the 1979-2000 average.
2016 was the hottest year ever, when we faced the last major El Niño.
Chances are high that this month of July will be our warmest ever. According to Karsten Haustein, a research fellow in atmospheric radiation at Leipzig University, ever means since the Eemian interglacial period 120,000 years ago.

UN Secretary General António Guterres said, if we persist in delaying key measures that are needed, I think we are moving into a catastrophic situation, as the last two records in temperature demonstrates. He was referring to the two all-time highs this past Tuesday and Wednesday.

I will soon post on Twitter vs Threads, but the latter was launched by Meta this past week, and within two hours Wednesday evening 2 million people downloaded the app, a copycat to Twitter.

Mark Zuckerberg reported Threads reached 30 million users in less than 24 hours.

Instagram took 15 months to reach 30 million downloads, and TikTok took two years.
Sign ups surpassed 70 million by Friday morning, and users posted more than 95 million posts and 190 million likes.

Threads might have been #2 to Nintendo's Mario Kart Tour.
Keep in mind that Twitter has 368 million users.
Elon Musk hinted that Meta stole trade secrets.
Zuckerberg took a swipe at Twitter by saying Threads would be "focusing on kindness."

Early adopters of Threads include Bill Gates, Shakira and Oprah Winfrey, along with brands like Netflix.
Will Threads become a Twitter-killer? Stay tuned.

Nothing to do with an app, but the most frightening film I might have ever seen was Threads, which I reviewed three years ago. Here is my monthly gift to you. Click on this and you can watch the entire 2 hour movie. But you might not want to do this. Here is one quote: I saw this first in the 1980s and had nightmares for some time afterwards. It is a horrible movie, not in the sense that it's badly made -- it's definitely not -- but it pulls NO punches. Unlike "The Day After", there is no reasonably clean hospital scenes ... no rosy hope that somehow we will make it past a nuclear war, regroup, and rebuild. This makes that old saw very clear: after a nuclear war, the living will envy the dead.

Also just this week in Florida, a video showed beachgoers fleeing the ocean after a shark started circling swimmers in shallow water.

Over the past week I've watched almost the entire Jaws series, and have just begun Jaws the Revenge, given 0 and 15 ratings by Rotten Tomatoes. Michael Caine and Mario Van Peebles are in it. The headliner was Lorraine Gary, who was the wife of the sheriff in the original. Not sure if I'll ever complete this one. Jaws III, incidentally, got 11/17, II 62/30 and Jaws an outstanding 97/90. Stars were Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary and Murray Hamilton. Steven Spielberg directed.

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

OSAKA EXPO: Day One

Well, the day finally came for us to go to the Osaka Expo. We were told ahead of time that the long walks would be fearful, giant lines will need to be tolerated just to get into the Expo, with those ocean breezes, it would really be cold, and so forth. Maybe it was pure luck, but we avoided all the above warnings We had a grand day, and are looking forward to Sunday, our second day at the Expo. So come along for an enjoyable ride. Our hotel is adjacent to the Tennoji Station, a very large one with several lines. We upgraded our Suica card and caught the Misosuji red line towards Umeda. Transferred to the Chuo green line at the Hommachi Station. This Osaka Metro train took us to the Yumeshima Station at the Expo site. It was a very large mob leaving the train and heading to the entrance. Took only a few minutes to get to the entrance. This mob was multiplied by at least a factor of ten of those already waiting to enter. However...

WHY YOU SHOULD CONVERT TO A JAPANESE HIGH TECH TOILET

Did you know that Oktoberfest in Germany is mostly in September? The very first day of Oktoberfest 2021 was supposed to be today, September 18, extending into October 3. Well, as in 2020, Oktoberfest was cancelled. So why is it called by that month when it is held mostly in September? The first celebration in 1810 was in October. Did you also know that Oktoberfest is held only in Munich? These days seven million drink more than a liter ( about three typical cans ) of beer each, costing around $11. Except for my wife and I when we followed the crowd to board the S-Bahn to the fairgrounds near Old Town. It was drizzling a bit. We bought a large pretzel outside of a typical barn where beer is served. We did not know that you needed to get this inside the hall. So no one came to serve us beer. After a while we decided to have lunch, and the restaurant we settled on only served wine. Thus, we might have been the ...

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